CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Officials in South Africa are considering charging four white students in the alleged abuse of black cleaning workers at a university housing facility.

The incident came to light after one of the students who made a video of the incident dumped his girlfriend, and she distributed the video among campus groups at Cape Town's University of Free State, the (Cape Town) Cape Argus reported Thursday.

The white students claim the video, shot five months ago, was intended to highlight the "dangers" of racial integration in student housing, the newspaper said. Footage of an "initiation" of cleaning staff personnel had been edited out of the video and stored in a computer file, the students said.

Two of the students shown in the video have been barred from the campus while the other two have already completed their studies, the newspaper said.

Prosecutors confirmed they were looking into possible criminal charges, and police clashed with students on campus Wednesday, following several marches last week in protest of the university's new integration policy.

A South African Human Rights Commission official said the commission would investigate the incident, as well as several other incidents of alleged racism on the campus.